The Future of Games

1 Introduction

 Lots of things are changing in the games industry

 We’re going to talk about a few of them  Hardware trends  Software trends  Game design trends  Business model trends Hardware Trends More cores for all platforms

 Multithreaded, job-based game architecture is increasingly important  Burst processing  ECS!  Increase in functional programming models to solve some multithreaded issues  Map-Reduce  Immutable data Heterogeneous parallel programming

 GPUs are different from CPUs  Local memory (VRAM)  Different instruction set  Highly parallel  Throughput optimised  Batch up computations, submit to GPU, get results later  Increasingly suitable for applications other than rendering  Physics  Machine learning  CPUs are latency optimised  Designed for frequent branching  Computation results are available “immediately” Cloud

 Computation as a service  Lowers the barriers to online services  Great for small developers  Scalability  Can spin up new servers to handle load on the service  Pay as you go  Popular platforms  Amazon Web Services (AWS)  Microsoft Azure  Cloud Platform (GCP)  Google App Engine  Increasingly used for hosting dedicated game servers Mobile

 Mobile hardware is getting close in performance to current consoles  Already past the last generation of consoles  Some new input mechanics  Touch screen  Accelerometer  GPS (Ingress - Pokemon Go, Harry Potter)  No D-pad on an iPhone  Examples:  iPhone  iPad  3DS Controllers

 Wiimote  PS Move  Kinect – oh dear  U gamepad – oh dear  - Labo  VR controllers  Haptic controllers  Companion apps  Touchscreen  Accelerometer  GPS  Camera Stereoscopic 3D

 Nintendo 3DS – but is it on the way out?  More games support 3D – but still nowhere near all  Consoles are capable of making games in 3D, but graphics horsepower isn’t really there VR and AR

 Oculus Rift  HTC Vive  PSVR   HoloLens  Magic Leap Longshots

 Recent things – how did they pan out?

 Valve’s console – failure!  : Android console – failure!  Big support on Kickstarter  OnLive / Playstation Now – success!  AppleTV as a console – working!  Google TV – failure!

 Another longshot  Death of the console industry, or one of its players In the twilight of Moore’s Law, the transitions to multicore processors, GPU computing, and HaaS cloud computing are not separate trends, but aspects of a single trend – mainstream computers from desktops to ‘smartphones’ are being permanently transformed into heterogeneous supercomputer clusters. Henceforth, a single compute-intensive application will need to harness different kinds of cores, in immense numbers, to get its job done.

The free lunch is over. Now welcome to the hardware jungle.

Herb Sutter 2012 http://herbsutter.com/welcome-to-the-jungle/ Software Trends Rendering

 Lighting models  Physics-based lighting now common  Real-time raytracing – RTX  Quantitative improvements – “4K ready”  Procedural content Physics

 Finite element methods  Destructible worlds  Very few games have pursued the “construction physics” approach of Red Faction: Guerilla  Crackdown 3 maybe  Soft bodies  Fluids  Continuous collision detection  Quantitative improvements Animation

 Parametric blending – Uncharted 4  Improvements in motion capture - Hellblade  Facial animation  Automatic phoneme detection  Autonomous control  Natural motion  Motion planning Artificial Intelligence

 Machine learning  Planning  Motion  Navigation  Action  Less scripting, more 'brain' Game Design Trends Casual games

 Social gaming  Facebook gaming  Play with friends  Strange relationship with the rest of the games industry  Mobile  Instant-on, bite-sized gaming  Play in a few minutes  On transit, waiting in line, etc  Input differences dramatically influence game design  Candy Crush, Angry Birds, etc.  Board game ports have been successful on the iPad Telemetry and Metrics

 Publishers and developers can get data on what players are doing  Either in development, or after launch  Focus development effort on things players do most or where they get stuck  Release new versions or updates based on telemetry data

 Vital for some business models like social and free-to- play Compulsion loops

 “Kompu Gacha” – banned in Japan in 2012

 The dark side of telemetry and metrics

 If you optimise for certain metrics, you can get games that do well at those metrics, but very little else

 Loot boxes – a good or bad thing? In some European countries, possibly an illegal thing? User-generated content

 Photo modes, video capture  Important enough that current-gen consoles have intrinsic support for it  Photos actually look good enough to be worth sharing ;)  SteamWorks: end-to-end support for creating and distributing mods and assets

 Can actually make money from it  Level editors, sometimes even on console games

 Halo Forge, DOOM SnapMap  Super Mario Maker, Little Big Planet

 Keeps players coming back without ongoing cost to developer Remasters and spiritual successors

 Remasters from earlier console generations (sometimes much earlier) are popular  Needs skilled conversion work – BluePoint Games  Often 'just' a visual upgrade – people want the game to feel the same, but to look modern

 Spiritual successors – devs who worked on one IP make something very similar  Pillars Of Eternity, Yooka-Laylee, Bioshock, Axiom Verge, Obduction, Mighty No. 9  Reliant on nostalgia and/or disdain for modern design  Often crowdfunded  Can self-limit potential market  Might just crash and burn (ironically, movie tie-in games have somewhat died out) Business Model Trends Crowdfunding / transparent development

 A few high-profile games on Kickstarter – Elite: Dangerous – We Happy Few – Star Citizen – Prison Architect Pillars Of Eternity  Steam Greenlight / Early Access  Early access means you are at least guaranteed to get some kind of game to play immediately  Customers want to influence design, want transparency  Unreal Tournament – development halted (thanks Fortnite) Hits-driven business

 More money going to top titles, less to everyone else  Games have always been this way, but the gap is getting wider  Mobile changed this only temporarily  The same may happen with VR  The top titles are probably happy with this, but over the long term it may not be great for the industry  Film has smaller “Indie” successes, but they’re rare in games  It’s not all doom and gloom though  Cheap/free engines lower the barrier to entry for the small guy  Easy access to large distribution channels (App Store etc)  Crowdfunding Battle for the living room

 Netflix on console – sure, but TVs often integrate it too. Lots of buzz around Bandersnatch.  AppleTV as a console – not a major player?  Google Chromecast – Android games  Valve's console – didn't take off

 This is first generation where we've had “.5” consoles  Designed to promote 4K visuals  Games must use extra power strictly for visuals, not gameplay  Can make users of the “.0” hardware feel inferior  Reviewers will be encouraged to concentrate on the X / Pro versions Free to play

 AEM  Acquire, Engage, Monetize  Advertisement-funded  Microtransactions  Free for the main game, but pay for extras  Pay to progress  Or at least to progress quickly  Pay to win  Pay for better gear than other players  Once the economy of the game is ruined, start up a new server  More common in Asia Subscriptions

 Holy Grail for publishers  Predictable long term income

 MMOs on PC have been doing this for a long time  e.g. World of Warcraft

 Hardware platforms  Xbox Live Gold  PlayStation Plus  Users can play multiplayer, get free games  Recoups the cost of running servers Content monetization

 Paid DLC  Paid virtual swag  Skins  Hats  Taunt animations  If you buy a taunt animation and kill me and I see it, that means the animation must exist on my machine too ;)  Small amounts from many players add up  DLC isn't free to develop

 Taking a cut of player transactions

 Tower Records has gone out of business  Music sales have mostly moved online  Amazon  iTunes  Apple Music

 Blockbuster has gone out of business  DVD sales and rentals have mostly moved online  Amazon  iTunes  Netflix

 GameStop is going out of business...?  Game “first sales” have mostly moved online Not yet...

 GameStop is still a big player in the games industry  Publishers want to move to online, but don’t want to upset GameStop, Walmart, etc

 Advantages to digital  Lower cost of goods (basically free to distribute online)  Stops used game sales – which is where a lot of store revenue is  Low-friction purchasing

 Some clear successes already  iTunes App Store  Steam, especially its compulsive promotions Mobile

 Very good device penetration  Don’t need a console when you already have a phone  Cheaper games  Price point seems to be $0.99 or free  Much harder to market games  Can’t pay for shelf space

 iPhone vs DS, PSP, Vita Rise and fall of Zynga

 Social Game Developer  Primarily Facebook games  Free to play with microtransactions  Strong focus on telemetry  Very successful IPO  Social was the new moneymaker  Facebook rule changes have hurt Zynga  Can’t spam friends as much as before  Zynga’s business is still hits-based  Farmville was huge  Cityville less so  Farmville 2 was a mild success  Huge (75%) drop in stock price in 2012  CEO named one of the worst CEOs of 2012 E-Sports

 Rapidly growing business  2015 revenue:  Asia $321 million  US $224 million  Europe $172 million  Rest of world $29 million

Tournament prizes Game Voyeurism

 Free marketing  TV  Games are starting to offer Twitch integration  Rise Of The Tomb Raider allows Twitch viewers to select between difficulty mods for the streaming player

 YouTube  YouTube personalities are sometimes trusted more than mainstream reviewers - “no filter”  Getting your game mentioned by Yogscast or PewDiePie can spike sales Summary

 Lots of stuff happening in the industry

 Some trends are very clear:  Multiprocessor hardware  Digital distribution

 Some less clear, susceptible to laws / player takeup:  Social games  VR / AR